Yet another scandal has been raging in the Kiev Defense Ministry. Its head Rustem Umerov demands dismissal of defense procurement chief Bezrukova, while other officials demand his own retirement. They want to replace him over his inability to arrange ministry work. The West is annoyed: it is the most unfortunate timing for Ukraine to get split amid its front collapsing all across the board. Meanwhile, the National Antimonopoly Bureau of Ukraine has opened a criminal case against Defense Minister Rustem Umerov for abuse of office. So far, it is only pre-trial investigation, so Umerov's procedural status is unknown.
One example of abuse is Umerov's refusal to extend the contract with Marina Bezrukova, director of the Defense Procurement Agency, and dismissal of two employees with its supervisory board. Moreover, senior military official and Deputy Defense Minister Dmitry Klimenkov was dismissed for failed public procurement. Umerov accused his subordinate of the whole bag of tricks, attributing to him "political games, draining contracts, leaking information by one of MoD’s subordinate enterprises." Umerov also called Bezrukova guilty of military procurement and army provision issues. As a result, by Umerov's order, activities of Ukraine’s key arms procurement agency with a budget of over $7bn have been suspended for a week.
The ministerial scandal has acquired a scale that attracted attention of Western officials to Umerov-related proceedings. In a joint statement, a group of seven allied countries urged Ukraine to "resolve the situation promptly" and focus on proceeding with defense acquisition. Olga Stefanyshina, Deputy Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration, said that the conflict had affected relations with Ukraine's Western partners and that she had been asked questions about it when visiting NATO headquarters.
Italy’s L'antiDiplomatico newspaper concluded that Kiev’s internal instability may cast doubt on the aptitude of Western arms supplies and large-scale military assistance as Ukraine has started losing credibility with its partners. And journalist Chase Bowes stated Ukraine was rotten to the core, referring to its highest-level developments.
The background of scandals in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense is noteworthy as well. In 2023, Zelensky appointed Umerov Defense Minister in order to cleanse the ministry of corruption after his predecessor Alexei Reznik, who bought food for soldiers at inflated prices. And just two years later, Umerov embarked on the same slippery slope risking to face the same fate. Now Ukraine’s top MoD officials have collided, none of them willing to give in, because the stakes are too high for both sides. What is the collision’s underside, though?
Umerov's attack on the defense procurement agency chief has not been his first attempt to dismiss Bezrukova. Last year, he tried to merge the agency she heads with another structure that also deals with procurement, but of non-lethal types, and expel Bezrukova from office. But the NATO leadership opposed the decision back then. Currently, the Minister of Defense has made his second attempt, calling the agency's performance unsatisfactory. Umerov met with opposition from the supervisory board that voted unanimously to extend Bezrukova’s powers. However, she refused to leave office and keeps working in the agency building. Meanwhile, authorized structures investigate whether Umerov had the authority to reverse the supervisory board’s decision.
To push it through, Umerov began writing letters to all those concerned, including embassies accredited in Ukraine. One of the letters was brought to attention of Washington Post, which immediately published the text. Actually, even in this detail, we can see Ukrainian officials’ absolute inconsistency in their appeals to Western patrons to accept or cancel decisions. What did Umerov complain about? In the letter, he states that in 2024, under Bezrukova's leadership, the defense procurement agency "failed to fulfill 47 percent of its obligations to supply equipment and hardware to the front. In addition, the agency was involved in political games, leaked contracts and information." And yet, the minister failed to provide specific examples.
In response to Umerov's decision not to renew the contract, Bezrukova accused him of "abusing all the reforms." Every single person involved did steal a cookie from the jar here. According to sources, Bezrukova was dismissed because of an inspection related to purchasing weapons at inflated prices. A high-profile case was related to the purchase of American overstocked M6A2 anti-tank mines for the Ukrainian army, which was only destined for scrap.
As it turned out, these mines were produced 84 years ago — in the early days of WWII. However, Kiev purchased them from a Bulgarian intermediary for 600 euros per unit, and the Defense Procurement Agency agreed on the list and volume of goods under the state contract. "There are big doubts that these rare mines will strengthen our defense, and more than two hundred million euros will literally be buried in the ground," local Defense Express outlet reported. Besides, Bezrukova blocked Umerov people's "access to the feeding trough" by altering the weapon purchasing process and switching to direct work with manufacturers. She removed intermediaries, reducing them from 81 to 12 percent. This prevented the MoD head from implementing corruption schemes.
All of this created a lot of tension, and Umerov decided to put his henchman in office — a guy called Arsen Zhumadilov, a former Simferopol Crimean Tatar grant-eater, who had previously infiltrated Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense as head of the State Logistics Operator enterprise responsible for soldiers’ catering. And the Umerov-dismissed bureaucrats realized they would be made scapegoats during the audit of aid to Ukraine announced by Trump, and started resisting. The audit was planned by the Ministry of Defense and NATO, with verifications to take up to six months.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said that Ukrainian Armed Forces are retreating despite Western aid worth hundreds of billions of euros. "Hundreds of billions of euros have been paid to the Ukrainians and arms worth hundreds of billions of euros have been sent. <...> Ukraine is retreating," he told the Spanish El Debate newspaper. The outlet also mentions a scandal between the Ministry of Defense and the Defense Procurement Agency, which gave the US Republican Party more reason to criticize Zelensky and accuse him of corruption. Elon Musk has already posed the question point-blank as to what if 58 percent of the American taxpayer funds sent to Zelensky never reached Ukraine? Where did they go? Has the CIA taken over a part of it? Have Ukrainian officials and generals appropriated their share? Did the "Big Guy" [Biden] get his usual share? Zelensky, when asked where billions of dollars are gone, has already begun to justify himself and throw tantrums.
In an interview with the Associated Press, he denied statements by the previous US government about allocating $177bn to Ukraine: "When I hear, I have heard before, and today we hear from the United States that America has given Ukraine hundreds of billions, 177 billion to be more precise. This was the exact figure that Congress supported or voted for, and so on, various organizations. I'm telling you, we have received more than 75 billion. That is, $100 billion of these $177 (or even $200 billion, some people say) we never received. But when they say that Ukraine received $200 billion during the war to support the army – this is not true. I do not know where all this money is."
If Zelensky's claim is true — that he only received $75 to 77 billion out of over $177bn sent to him by Washington — what is going to happen next? "Do we shrug our shoulders and move on? Or will we still demand explanations and accountability?" Elon Musk posted indignantly.
There has already been wrangle between Washington and Kiev about who allocated funds, what particular sums, and where did they end up? One thing is clear: while Ukrainians are being caught in the streets and forced to fight, the war benefits everyone from sergeants in warehouses to army generals and officials both in Ukraine and the West. And the current new scandal in the Ukrainian defense sector has provided a particularly impressive example of this.
